The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(62)

“I don’t understand why a councilman would water a tree,” she said. “Middlings with special scripts to serve the High Kith tend to gardens. And clean, and run errands, and generally do all the things no one really wants to do.”

“That’s why it is so interesting.” I took a bite of the jammy pancake. The delicious goo of jam and the sunny taste of butter flooded my mouth. “What is this?”

“Perrin jam.”

“Perrins.” I lowered the next forkful. “I can’t eat perrins. They’re not my kith.”

“Yes, you can.”

I smiled. “You’re right.” I reached for more jam.

“Look at you, taking what you want. So very High of you.”

I made an incredulous noise.

“What?” she said.

I remembered perfectly the last time I’d seen myself in a reflection, in one of Terrin’s mirrors. I hadn’t looked carefully, true, but even so I could see how faded my face was, the grim set of my mouth, the black messy blur of my hair. The idea that anything about me was High seemed like another one of Sid’s jokes. I brushed past her question. “I think there was something in that councilman’s watering can other than water,” I said. “Something that he couldn’t entrust to a Middling gardener. Something that makes that tree tell fortunes.”

She considered this, nodding—not in immediate agreement, but in recognition of a valid interpretation.

“Will there be councilmen at tonight’s party?” I asked.

“Doubtful. They serve the Lord Protector. They are too serious for parties. We should go anyway. I want to know what you make of the night’s entertainment.” Then she hesitated, her eyes roving over me. “Do you like what you’re wearing?”

I glanced down at my pale brown dress with its frayed hem. “I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?” She seemed genuinely surprised, which I could understand, given how much she cared about what she wore. It was evident in the expertly fitted quality of her trousers and her sleeveless tunic with its short collar, the fabric thin enough for the heat and so exquisitely sewn that you could not see the seams. They were men’s clothes, though far simpler than the embroidered, jewel-toned clothes that the High brothers in the market had worn. “Clothes are important,” she said.

“To you.”

“But not to you?”

I thought about it. “They’re important to you because you have so many choices,” I said finally, “and what you wear shows what you want. They hide your body, but they also show yourself. I don’t have much choice. It doesn’t really matter whether I wear beige or brown or gray. They are shades of the same thing. There is no meaning to whether I wear a dress or trousers, beyond whatever is most comfortable for work. It’s different for me.”

“It’s not just about how I look. It’s how I feel.”

“Isn’t how you look part of how you feel?”

She glanced at the sea. “Yes.”

“I can’t go to the party dressed like this, can I?”

“You can. You should wear whatever you want.”

“I don’t know what I want. Even if I did, I could die for wearing it. If I wear this and get caught as Half Kith, I’ll be punished for having a forged document and going beyond the wall.”

“As I said, people here think you’re playing a game. That your clothes are a costume. A joke.”

Her hesitancy, though, made me guess at something else. “But tonight it would be odd. They would stare.”

“Yes.”

“Would that embarrass you?”

“No.”

“I have a Middling passport. I could dress as Middling, and go as your servant.”

“You’re not my servant.”

“Aren’t I?”

“No.” Slowly, she said, “I don’t like that option.”

“I don’t have any good options. I could wear a High dress, and if my passport is checked and I’m believed to be Middling, I’ll be punished for breaking the sumptuary law. I don’t know what would happen to a Middling for that. And if my passport doesn’t pass muster and it’s found to be forged, then we’re right back where we were before, with me imprisoned and executed.”

“No one checks passports at parties. It would spoil the mood.”

“Then maybe it’s best for me to wear High-Kith clothes, if you think I’d blend in.”

She widened incredulous eyes.

“What?” I said.

“The idea of you blending in.”

“You think my manners won’t match how I’m dressed, and I’ll be classed anyway?”

“No.”

I was growing angry. “Or that nothing I wore could ever make me look as good as you?”

“No.” She was angry now, too.

“Then what is it?”

Her words came in a sudden rush. “You’re hard to look away from. I can’t look away from you. I don’t know how anyone could.”

This wasn’t flirtation. The words had none of her usual ease. She sounded agitated. She sounded unlike herself.

I touched the burn on my cheek. It didn’t hurt anymore, at least not on the skin. I pushed my ragged hair behind my ears. I felt hollowed out, like one of the pale blue eggs on Sid’s plate. She saw the gesture, and frowned, and started to say something, but I spoke over her. “What do you think?”